CDC Funds Faulty Anti-Alcohol Study That Targets Budweiser

If you end up in the emergency room for a serious injury
after a night out, it might be because you were drinking Budweiser.

Or at least that’s the claim of a questionable new study,
conducted by The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at The Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Medical Health. Among emergency room
patients with alcohol-related injuries, the most likely culprit of beers turned
out to be the King of Beers, Budweiser.

Well at least that’s what the media said about the study.

In reality, the tiny report was only intended to find out
what information could be obtained from patients with injuries related to
alcohol overconsumption. An additional caveat to this story was that it was just
a pilot study, funded by The Centers
for Disease Control (CDC), which raised ethical issues. And then there were the
ethical concerns about how the study was actually done.

Journalists jumped to focus on the misleading results. As The
Incidental Economist pointed out, journalists missed the whole point of the
study entirely, which was to find out the “feasibility of collecting
alcohol brand consumption data from injured patients who drank within six hours
of presentation.” Not only that, but many did not report that this was a pilot
study, or that were only 105 people sampled, or that it was conducted in a
single urban hospital E.R. in Baltimore.

Hardly conclusive data.

That didn’t stop the Post from running a story with the
headline: “Study: Budweiser, Colt 45 most popular beers among ER patients.” As
if the study had some statistical validity.

The article mainly appeared in online news blogs, but it was in print on Aug. 20 in The New York Times. The version was duller but
still ridiculous, claiming that the analysis “found that five beer brands were
consumed most often by people who ended up in the emergency room.” The Times
managed to hide several important details of the story:

The tiny sample size of
just 105 people;

The singular location of
where the study took place;

The fact that the study
was conducted by the anti-alcohol CAMY;

The fact that participants
were reluctant to give information until CAMY researchers put on white
coats – in a questionable maneuver that could have made them appear as
medical professionals;

They mislead in their lede
claiming that “roughly a third of all visits to emergency rooms for
injuries are alcohol related” when in fact that number is related to
Friday and Saturdays alone.

Ethical Concerns
Raised Over Nature of Study

The most questionable part of the study was the fact that
CAMY researchers had to don white lab coats to gain the trust of interviewed patients.
Such potentially deceptive behavior naturally raised ethical concerns.

The Business and Media Institute contacted Johns Hopkins for
a statement regarding the ethics of its study. Spokesman Tim Parsons had this to say:

“The ER staff granted permission to conduct the study as was
stated in the research article. The researchers were not attempting to portray
themselves as physicians, but rather to portray themselves as belonging in the
ER environment so as to distinguish themselves from other individuals who were
not affiliated with the ER but who may have had other reasons for wanting to
approach patients. The consent form used in this research specified that it was
conducted by an individual who were not physicians and that the goal was to
understand how drinking behaviors may precede arrival at an ER with an injury.”

However, according to prominent medical ethicist Arthur
Caplan, head of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University’s Langone
Medical Center, wearing white lab coats was misleading to patients.

“Putting on white coats is not acceptable. It conveys
the appearance of being caregivers—not researchers. The researchers should
absolutely be crystal clear in approaching potential subjects that they are
doing research/surveys that have nothing to do with clinical care.”

The Origin of the
Attack

The media drew their own conclusions to attack the alcohol
industry. Johns Hopkins didn’t try to refute the media’s analysis, but digging
into the background of who funded and conducted the story might explain why.

“Understanding the relationship between alcohol brands and
their connection to injury may help guide policy makers in considering taxation
and physical availability of different types of alcohol given the harms
associated with them."

Clearly the study had an ulterior motive of regulating the
alcohol industry. That wasn’t unusual since the CDC and CAMY have attacked the
alcohol industry for its advertisements, which they say are linked to underage
drinking. They have also pushed for more regulation and monitoring of what a
company can and can’t do in their advertising.

Even the left wing The
Atlantic Wire admited the Hopkins study aimed to punish certain businesses.

“It could help public health experts see if there's a group
that's more at risk for injury that others, or if there's a correlation between
who’s being targeted and who's getting injured. For example, if Budweiser is
actively targeting young people and there's a sudden uptick in young people
going to the emergency room because of Budweiser,
studies like this could tell us a lot about the power of marketing.”

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